Frankencat (a 9 shortfilm fanfic)
by Yoyobionicle
Summary: A story focused on the shortfilm, particularly the Catbeast, from the point of view of the man that created said Catbeast. (He's dead, that's true, but I hear he got better.) Part humor, part horror, and partly a method to the madness.
1. Chapter 1: FRANKENCAT

THE SAD, SAD TALE OF FRANKENCAT

A 9 shortfilm fanfic

[FRANKENCAT]

_ Are you reading this?_

That's not a rhetorical question. I'm asking, are you really seeing this handwriting? Is it on paper? On stone, perhaps, or an old preWar computer screen?

And if it is, are you the one it was intended for?

If you're not, I take no offense to your prying eyeballs. Read on. Correct my spelling and punctuation if you wish. But know that these words were not meant for you.

This is an explanation. A method to the madness.

I am the maker of the monster, and I felt someone ought to know.

I'll make one thing clear. This is not a confession. There will be no lacy hankies, no political correctness, and no cakes and iced tea served afterward. If you think I'm writing because I'm sorry, you'd best quit while you're ahead, because I'm not.  
But I wanted to explain that _It_was not made to do what it did. Like a spiral into madness viewed from outside, I cannot say why it happened, only bear witness to the course of events.

As an example, let's compare it to, say, watching... let's call him _Alfred_, slowly becoming convinced his toes are trying to communicate with him. At first, all you see is a queer shift in behavior; there he is, toes to his ears, ferociously concentrating in a very odd way. Then his behavior shifts some more. He memorizes the 'This Little Piggy' song. Suddenly he starts drawing faces on his toes. It all seems bizarre but harmless right up to the moment he tries to hack his toes off with an oyster knife.

And now you're thinking 'that wasn't an example as much as a non sequitor,' but the point is, my machine gradually changed. I watched Its behavior shift until it was no longer the harmless thing I made, but something new, a hybrid of computer and beast and something _else._

...This is not to say I was literally following the thing around with a clipboard like a man-version of Jane Goodall. I was dead long before my machine became a monster. I know everything that happened, though I do not understand how. I don't understand a lot of the things that happened after humanity vanished from the earth.

And now you're thinking "Wait, that makes no sense. You can't be writing this if you're _dead_."

And that sounds rather presumptuous, don't you think, to assume this is all madness and that this madness is all my fault? Honestly now. Perhaps in reality this is nothing but a blank page and _you're _the one that's CRAZY.

Hear me out. I don't know why this is possible, myself. The world I could explain was shut up like a book. And in this new world, the moment Humanity's collective back was turned, new rules peered out and cried "Finally, they're GONE" before they leaped forth to inherit the earth. But I shouldn't speak too much of the new before I explain the old.

In that old world that was shut up like a book, I created It.

It was not a monster then. It was a machine. No, not even that much. A glorified computer with legs. Almost a toy.

I was different then, as well. In that world I was a student, almost a graduate. My machine was a project I chose in my early career. I challenged myself by creating a learning machine. I programmed it to do only one thing: to find life, and to imitate it. Its only purpose. Its fatal flaw.

My machine's mind was versatile, its body, analogous. It performed well, analyzing and then imitating for my superiors, all manner of four-legged mammals. I spent the rest of my education period refining it. It was my mindless masterpiece. I used it for shallow things. It entertained my peers. It impressed girls.

In my youth I called it Frankencat, and thought myself witty.

After that, I'm not sure what happened, exactly. What happened to me. What happened to everything else. It would seem we all gave up the great human race and jogged off the asphalt to buy a drink and talk about what a mistake _that_was. In other words, Humanity disappeared. How, I would not know. I was probably dead before it happened, but suffice it to say, we as a species were gone, and we left behind an awful lot of junk.

Among that junk lay my machine.

I cannot say how many years it must have lain there. Hundreds, perhaps, or thousands. The world no longer aged in a way I understood. Bacteria seemed to have disappeared. Time and weather took up new roles. Plastic and metal no longer corroded the way it used to. The meek, inanimate things of the world inherited the earth, and at first they put on a great show of lying still, as though playing dead and waiting for the End of the World to get bored and wander away.

And perhaps it worked, because all those years later, my machine got back up.


	2. Chapter 2: IT

[IT]

New rules were taking hold of the earth. A brave new world was forming that gave Humanity's old crap sanction to rise up and fill the absence. I can't understand why the Big-Grand-Phooba-In-The-Sky felt my machine ought to be included in this revolution.

Frankencat rose to its feet very different from the professional little machine I had built. All the fine plastics over its metal skeleton had crackled away. Even the cat skull I'd used to shape its head was exposed. Weak new-world rust cankered its joints like arthritis. Thus did Frankencat roam the earth, in a grand mockery of the life it imitated.

The world had changed _all the way down_to the molecular level, but my machine remained the same. It climbed the lonely rubble of cities with one mindless purpose: to fulfill its programming. To find and imitate life.

And now you're thinking "Wait, I know where this is going", and you would be right; It searched in vain. The only sound was the keening of wind through the bullet holes. The only movement was shuffling debris. The only light was the sun filtering through the clouds of mortar dust that peppered the muggy wind. There was nothing left. No animals to imitate. No people to give commands. Frankencat was reduced to a technological joke; a learning machine that could not learn.

Since inorganic matter was no longer being broken down, Frankencat's mechanical brain remained intact. But as the years and years weighed in, it was the simplest of overlooks that doomed my learning machine.

There was no one to turn it off.

Every second of every day it attempted to execute its programming, and every second of every day it was met with some equivalent of FILE NOT FOUND. But it couldn't stop searching. It wasn't programmed to stop.

It wandered those mummified cities for _years._Its brain was overtaxed. Programs began to execute poorly, or slowly. Parts of the brain became inaccessible. Other parts started to bog down, or skip like a scratched CD.

You understand now, don't you. My machine began to go mad.

Finding life at last did not alleviate that madness in the least.


	3. Chapter 3: GRENDEL

[GRENDEL]

I believe the law all children are familiar with, known simply as Stuff Comes To Life When We're Not Looking, must have always existed in some sense, because as soon as Humanity was gone, that law went MAD with power. In hindsight, perhaps the children who insisted their teddy bears came to life when no one was around _may have been on to something._

My machine was no longer the only thing roaming the ruins.

I can't explain these new creatures in scientific terms. The scientific laws I remember wet themselves and fled when the world ended, and their new-world replacements never follow the rules. I could try to explain the 'others' that appeared in the ruins by suggesting that life was destroyed, but not the source where life comes from. I could say that any man-made thing, if left alone for long enough, becomes organic again. I could even say I have no idea where they came from, so don't ask.

They were humanoid. Inorganic, but sapient life forms with metal in the place of bone, cloth in the place of flesh, and eyes formed of aluminum and glass. It was like the force that created human beings was still making life, uninhibited by the fact that there was nothing organic left to make them from. And though their skeletons were metal, these tiny sapient things were not machines. _They were alive._ That much became clear to me immediately.

At first there were only three or four of them. Then, one by one, more began to appear. And these evolved, inanimate things, they _behaved like people_. They walked like people. They talked like- actually, no, they didn't talk like people. Truth be told, they didn't make any sound at all, but I'm sure The Big Grand Phoobah In The Sky was working on it. What was important was that they lived and worked together in a creative, benevolent community that was purely human.

I know their behavior because It watched them obsessively.

The instant my machine became aware of them, its broken brain was consumed with them. It kept out of sight and stalked them with a crazed sort of intensity. It stared, without moving, for days on end through blank glass eyes.

These sapient things were infinitely more complex than the animals it was programmed to imitate. But more importantly, it was fundamentally impossible for a machine to replicate the things it was seeing: imagination, compassion- for lack of a better term, the human soul. It rocked on the fringe of its programming but still couldn't fulfill it.

Then, one day, its behavior shifted. Suddenly it wasn't watching the sapients anymore.

At first, I assumed its brain had concluded watching them was futile. It left the area where they lived and creaked away on rusted joints. It appeared to be starting its search over again.

Then It began to find what it was looking for, and I realized it hadn't abandoned its obsession at all.

It was very particular about the bits of metal it was picking up. It only gathered bolts of specific sizes. And the metal bits were always things like forks- long, and sharp.

It had observed the sapients working with metal and electric wire. It imitated those skills to add it itself in dreadful ways. Claws. Spines. A flashlight eye.

They HAD something It didn't, something that made them impossible to replicate, and it was going to rip them open and _tear their insides out _until it had that something for itself.

The thing that stalked back toward the sapients wasn't Frankencat anymore. It had become something I can only name as _Grendel._

I call it that for two reasons. For one, it was, in the end, slain by a copy of the epic poem "Beowulf." Of all the things that died when the world ended, irony most definitely did not.

You'll realize the other reason in just a bit.

The sapients had built a chamber under the earth out of metal and stone. A sapient at the entrance froze, shocked, when he saw It. He had nothing to defend himself with except his own hands and a useless circle of metal dangling from his neck.

It swatted the him aside with one claw. He crumpled into the wall with a crunch of broken metal and went still.

The others froze, staring in alarm at the bony claw-covered thing that loomed in the doorway. With a click, its new eye glared light into the burrow and stared back.

And when It finally attacked, not a one of them got away.

My monster intended to rip out whatever it was that made them so impossible to replicate, and add that to itself. It wasn't enough to imitate them. It intended to _be _them.

And now you're thinking all that murder must have been pointless, because you can't tear out the human soul.

That, unfortunately, is where you'd be wrong.


	4. Chapter 4: BEOWULF

Last segment! Yaaaay!

In honor of Shane Acker's revolutionary short, I post this story with all the love and fascination that shortfilm holds for me. And hopefully this little humor-spotted ditty reminds you why you loved 9 from the start, too~!

[BEOWULF]

It was over in seconds, like those awkward surprise parties for Grampa that end up inducing heart attacks and 911 calls. I don't want to describe what happened. Suffice to say, it turns out the humanoid things really can't speak, or, for that matter, scream.

Bodies crunched under its feet like discarded peanut shells as It- Grendel- inspected the aftermath. They were all, impossibly, still alive. The scene was reminiscent of pinned mice trying to crawl away, mouse trap and all, as if to say 'Honestly , today of all days. I have too much to do and those dens aren't going to tidy themselves.' Most of the sapients lay still. Others tried to shift with movements full of pain.

In the dark spaces surrounding the light from its eye, my monster noticed a soft glow. One of the sapients wore a dome of metal on a string around its neck, exactly like the sapient near the entrance. The strange pendant glowed gently in the dark, lighting the chamber in an ironically soothing shade of green.

Grendel clicked off its eye and picked up the glowing dome of metal. The pendant reacted, wildly glowing, as though it were alive. It opened itself right in my monster's face. Then, as if it was looking for something it didn't find in the machine, or perhaps just offended by Grendel's ugliness, it shut again. As my monster moved to put it down, the pendant was briefly angled at the half-dead sapient at its feet, and this time the pendant found what it was looking for.

The dome of metal snapped open with a bright shot of green, reached inside his face with long tendrils of light, and quite literally tore him out of his body. He hit ground like a pinata emptied of candy and little plastic toys.

FILE FOUND.

In a crazed frenzy, Grendel used the pendant to tear out the soul of every sapient in the chamber. Then it turned to the spot where the first sapient, the one with the other pendant, had fallen.

That sapient was nowhere to be seen.

My monster kept the pendant on a long cord around its neck. Perhaps it thought wearing the souls made them apart of Itself. I think that's why it tore the cloth from the sapients' desiccated bodies and made a macabre new skin out of them. Oh, It was mad, all right.

I suspect it had lost track of its objective at that point. It didn't quite remember it was doing all this to learn. All it knew was that it was going to find the one that got away, and when it did, it was going to eat him alive, chaw him over like new-world tobacco, and spit him back out.

The strange living pendant seemed to 'want' the twin pendant the sapient had been wearing. My monster used it like a compass, following the strengthening pulses that indicated the other pendant was near. Grendel knew how to hunt. It could replicate a dozen different types of stalking, tracking, catching, killing.

The sapient at the other end must have caught on, because the pendant's pulses always ended as soon as they started. Why he didn't just drop the twin and run, I don't know. The pendant was important to him, I think, so he made himself a moving target instead. It was a long game of cat and mouse, but finally the cat got the upper hand. Grendel's ability to track its prey improved until the day it found a trail, and caught up to him.

He stood waiting for it, holding a weapon that was not enough, with a body that was too crippled. Half his skull, including the space where an eye ought to be, was sewn over with a huge leather patch. His leg was splinted with a nail. His walking stick leaned nearby on a cracked slab of cement.

In an imitation of catlike stealth that would have made me wild with Programmer Glee, my monster snuck right up behind him. He turned just in time to see Grendel's massive claw come down.

My monster settled on its hind legs, the sapient in one claw and the pendant in the other. The little cloth person's struggles were pointedly ignored. The pendant tore out his soul, and he went limp like a soggy piece of toast.

For a moment, it seemed the last living thing on the earth was finally dead. Then, for only a second, my monster heard something.

It rounded on the sound. A large can flaking with rusty holes perched quite innocently a few feet away. The machine stepped closer. The can was more hole than aluminum, and Grendel could see there was something inside.

PHUD-

The machine looked back. Just the sound of the late sapient's walking stick tipping and hitting the dirt.

It turned, set its claws in the edges of a rust-flaked hole, and poked its head inside the can.

Whatever had been there was gone.

And now you're thinking 'wait a minute, I thought Patch-Face who just died was the last of the sock people.' That was what I thought too- more importantly, so did It. But a sound mangling of the Patch-Face's body revealed no sign of the twin pendant.

Someone else had it. And if you were paying attention earlier, when I said more sapients had been appearing one by one, you'd have already guessed this was probably a new one that appeared recently. (But you didn't, which is why I just explained it for you. Let it never be said I wasn't a thorough writer.)

Now you must be thinking what a lucky little survivor the new guy was. And, if you're putting two and two together, you're likely now wondering if this ninth sapient was smart enough to drop the pendant and run for his little sock-person life. For the sake of being a thorough writer, I'll tell you no, he never did. But not because he wasn't smart.

This new sapient took the pendant far, far away from Grendel. He knew of it, and it definitely knew of him. It took a long time for my monster to catch up to him again. Finally Grendel spotted a trail and tracked him until its pendant began to pulse.

Thus it all came together- the oldest animate thing in the world against the youngest. The last of two bizarre new-world species, each destined to kill the other. Grendel versus Beowulf.

Grendel caught up to him at last in an old library. It looked over the ruins with its flashlight eye, and there, beneath what used to be the floor, was something moving.

It simulated sneaking. Stalking. Edging closer. Finally pouncing, piercing, killing.

Grendel removed its teeth from the thing's head and tried to remove its claws. Thick tar stuck its metal talons in place and oozed through the stab holes.

FILE NOT FOUND.

The real ninth sapient slipped from the ceiling and clipped the pendant right off Grendel's neck. This was followed by some serious fleeing on his part. The tar-filled decoy gave him a little head start, before my monster pulled free and went after him.

The library was filled with the screech of rusted joints moving at full payload. Grendel's legs alone were as long as the sapient was tall. It was half a second from catching up to him.

Then the sapient dove through a hole in a nearby license plate. When my monster leaped after him, it landed on nothing but a pile of loose papers. The sapient was already far off in the opposite direction, and it took a few seconds for Grendel to regain its footing and change course. By then the sapient had already slipped through a tiny opening beneath a propped-up book. The machine was forced to push the book over to follow.

Then the ninth sapient ran out of places to run- literally. He was rushing down a long board that extended into the air like the plank of a pirate ship. The second floor stopped short so patrons could get a scenic view of the floor below. All it gave _him _was a scenic view of a fatal fall.

Then Grendel was on the plank, blocking the way back to safety. It wore eight numbers on its handmade frankenflesh, including the remains of the Patch-Faced sapient. It was huge. And it was closing in on him like a wall of claws and teeth.

(I assume you're confused by now. 'Wait, everything was so planned out!' you cry. 'The decoy doll, the license plate, the little opening under the giant book- all that and he forgot to use the stairs?' That, or you're thinking 'You said the machine was killed by a copy of Beowulf. I knew you made that up. That is so cheap. You're probably not even dead.'  
At least you're reading critically.)

Grendel stood more than halfway out on the plank, mere inches from the sapient that backed away from it in terror. It reached for him with one long claw.

Then the plank creaked. That reaching claw overbalanced it just enough to tip it forward into empty space.

Grendel quickly retracted and backed up. The length of wood hesitantly righted itself again. The sapient stood in a safe zone at the far end of the plank. My monster couldn't reach him without tipping to its doom.

Then the sapient turned. Jumped off the edge. Grabbed a hinged rod attached to a solid board. Swung around. Shoved a copy of Beowulf off the edge. There was a rope around the book that was tied to the plank beneath Grendel's feet.

It was a hardcover copy of Beowulf. Special edition. Olde English alongside Modern English. It had an introduction, translator commentary, and a large appendix. It was a very heavy book.

The plank was snatched out from under my monster's weight. It had just enough time to understand what was happening before it fell, hit the ground, and never moved again.

That was the end of my machine. I could see no more of the world after that. My last connection to it was gone.

I wrote all this because I wanted to tell you something. Yes, you; the tiny Beowulf who slew my Grendel.

Know this.

Know that in its last moments, my learning machine did not display an _imitation _of shock. After two lifetimes as an imitation of life, and one mad crusade to become it, my learning machine felt a split second of real fear when it fell. Maybe that's because dying was the only act of living it was capable of. It could not feel emotion, could not dream, could not live its life. But it could die.

It is horrifying and moving for me to talk about my machine's accomplishments. It helped shape a world where machines were monsters, and life was not determined by flesh and blood but by the soul beneath the skin. I was the maker of the machine, but the impossible thing is, the machine made _itself _a monster.


End file.
